


something to keep the loneliness away

by a_novel_idea



Series: wait [1]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, No Character Death, Prisoner of War, Soulmarks, Soulmates, Tattoos, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 14:31:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2273337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_novel_idea/pseuds/a_novel_idea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s twenty-three when the navy blue and star yellow start to bleed off of the back of his leg. It burns, sears the soft skin there and leaves him breathless. When he convinces himself to look, it’s still there, burned black into the pale flesh of his leg, a sour reminder that whatever could have been is dead now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	something to keep the loneliness away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyIrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyIrina/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Not according to plan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2232783) by [LadyIrina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyIrina/pseuds/LadyIrina). 



Peter Quill has a soulmark. He’s had it since he was pretty young, since before Yondu and his crew whisked him away from Terra, since before his mom got sick and she was able to be happy for him. It’s a pretty decent size, smaller than his palm, but not unnoticeable. It sits on the back of his thigh, just above his knee. Sometimes, when the Ravengers got tired of teasing and poking and prodding, it made him feel better, knowing someone back on Earth was waiting for him, someone that would understand without question, without doubt. But he’s an adult now, old enough to know that he’ll never go back to Terra, not of his own free will, so the bisected triangle does nothing but cause him grief.

He’s twenty-three when the navy blue and star yellow start to bleed off of the back of his leg. It burns, sears the soft skin there and leaves him breathless. When he convinces himself to look, convinces himself that looking can do him no harm if he truly believes that soulmarks are a fairytale, he realizes that he never let go of that hope, that childish voice that told him all he had to do was wait, all he had to do was believe.

It’s still there, burned black into the pale flesh of his leg, a sour reminder that whatever could have been is dead now, gone, and it leaves him more empty than he ever remembers feeling.

Peter goes on. He does what he’s been taught to do: he steals. He does the jobs thrown his way, helps Yondu when asked, drowns out the space in between with cheap booze and even cheaper women. It becomes a constant battle to live with himself because, for all he goes through the motions, if someone were to try and end him, he wouldn’t argue.

But then, then they save the world, Xandar at the least, maybe the galaxy, and Peter still has no sense of self-worth, so when Ronan loses the infinity stone, he grabs it, and, for the first time in a very long while, everything is quiet. He is nothing and everything all at once, the end and the beginning, death and rebirth. He burns with the souls of one thousand galaxies, and is still achingly vacant of the one that matters most. Gamora takes his hand, Drax, Rocket, and it isn’t so quiet anymore, not when he can share this, hold it between them, fill it with something to keep the loneliness away.

The Nova Corps graciously take them in, house them, feed them, heal them. It’s as trapped as Peter’s felt in a while. They stay, answer questions, try to get their feet back under them.

Peter doesn’t rest, can’t, pretends just to keep the others at bay. He fakes sleep, avoids food, tries to remember to keep breathing because what other option does he have at this point?

He dozes off on their second night on Xandar. He doesn’t mean to, doesn’t want to, but the last week has been exhausting, and his body is ready to shut down. When he wakes up, abruptly, as if in a panic, his insides are twisted, and he barely makes it to the bathroom to dry heave over the toilet. He tries to be quiet, but he’s loud even in his own ears, and it doesn’t take long for someone to come looking.

It’s Rocket, which is actually surprising; Peter would have put his money on Drax. Rocket doesn’t say anything, just stands in the doorway and watches Peter wash his face. Peter ignores him, wills his heart rate to slow down, tries to catch his breath. He isn’t very successful. Rocket makes a comment about his Mark, nothing harmful, neutral, meaningless, but it’s the last thing Peter needs right now, and he’s hit with another wall of blind panic. His knees crack as he hits the floor in front of the toilet again.

He still doesn’t have anything in his stomach, and by the time he’s done heaving his lungs and stomach hurt. Someone drops a wet cloth on the back of his neck; he isn’t sure how long Drax and Gamora have been there, crowding the doorway, but he waves them both away when they try to help him up. He runs the water again, does his best to rinse the taste of stomach acid out of his mouth. It’s when he’s bent over the sink that Gamora takes notice of the Mark on his leg. She reaches out to touch it, but Peter flinches away.

None of them sleep for the rest of the night. Peter slips back into the Nova Corps sweatpants he’d been given, just so no one can see the blemish on his leg, but it’s too late; they know. He huddles on the mattress he’s claimed as his, tries to block out the sound of the others’ murmuring, but it doesn’t work.

In the morning, after he’s had time to piece himself back together, and they’re all sitting around the table, feigning interest in their food, Rocket tells them of a soldier he met when he and Groot had accidentally stumbled into a Kree battle zone.

***

Garthan Saal is Marked, has been since he was ten years old, since the triangle traced its way onto his shoulder in the middle of the night. His mother is proud, his father less so, and his brother borders on jealous. He doesn’t tell anyone else, doesn’t brag, doesn’t boast; he is happy with this being his, and his alone.

He is nineteen years old when he signs his life away to the Nova Corps. It’s been three months since the Kree Empire swept its way through Mirach’s defenses, wiping the planet nearly clean. The small town he’s known for all life is gone, erased from the planet like it never existed in the first place. His mother and brother are dead, obliterated like so many others; his father is missing, disappeared with an entire battalion of volunteers set on doing what they could to hold the armies back. There is nothing left for him here.

The Nova Corps are order, structure, the proper frame he needs to try and slot the pieces back together. Recruitment is the easy part; Xandarian officials aren’t concerned with where their soldiers come from or who they were before, just that they can keep up. Saal doesn’t want training to be easy, he wants to work until he’s exhausted, fight until he’s sick, feed his anger until it destroys him from the inside. Corps training is the hardest thing he’s ever done. After eight months of rigorous training, Saal graduates second in his class; it isn’t enough.

He’s twenty-one when his unit is activated. They’re all green, all young, all there for one reason or another. The commander they’re assigned is just as green as they are; he’s never seen action, never conducted troops. They’re set to fail before they even start.

He knows without being told that they aren’t supposed to survive; they’re a distraction, a decoy. They aren’t supposed to live long.

Their commander is the first to die, taken out by a sniper before they even make camp. The terrain around them is confusing, best for hiding, not for twenty-four inexperienced bodies. So their commander is dead, and they have no time to bury him, no time to register that they’re leaderless. They fall apart.

It takes six weeks. Six weeks of hiding, surviving, killing and being killed. They’ve demolished the Kree platoon they were meant to, picked them off slowly, one by one, as their own number dwindled.

In the end, only seven of them make it off the planet and out of the war zone; only six of them make it off the rescuing ship.

Saal is commended by the Xandarian government, awarded medals, offered leave and a mess of other things that are supposed to be rewards; he just wants to be able to sleep without screams echoing inside his skull.

Insomnia becomes his new best friend.

Saal becomes the soldier they want him to be: ready, willing, and unattached to anything that could hold him back. They make him an officer, give him a unit of his own. It’s everything he never wanted.

When he’s twenty-nine, Saals’ unit receives their orders to take up a one month patrol on Cadia, a planet that has already been touched by the Kree. It’s supposed to be simple, mindless, a reward for such well fought missions in the past. The Kree aren’t supposed to come back.

Garthan Saal is the lone survivor of his unit; he’s held captive for eighteen months. He doesn’t talk about it.

Saal never returns to active duty. He takes a desk job in the capital, follows the same routine every day, and, eventually, is able to wonder when, exactly, the Mark on his shoulder faded to blue and yellow.

His routine holds for four years, and then one morning he’s asked to cover the city patrol captain’s shift. His coworkers snicker; he’s been at a desk for so long, still and stagnant, that they’ve forgotten who he is. He agrees; it’s been nearly five years, and Saal thinks it’s time to start moving again.

Everything is okay until it’s not because one minute he’s making arrests, and the next he’s leading a force against the Kree. Again.

***

Two days after Rocket’s story, Xandarian officials declare them free to go, except they have nowhere _to_ go. Their personal effects are returned, clothing clean and weapons gleaming, and they are invited to meet with Nova Prime, commanding officer of the Nova Corps, before they go. She’s a soft looking woman who seems to be more politician now than commanding officer, but she’s the reason they’re all free to go with clean slates, so Peter has no complaints.

She explains to them the composition of the infinity stone as simply as she can, but Peter is paying her no real mind, too distracted by the exhaustion buzzing in his head. He perks up a little when she starts to talk about his biology, who his father could possibly be, but if he’s honest with himself, he hasn’t cared in a long time.

Peter doesn’t notice the room clearing at first, not until it’s just him, and Nova Prime, and these friends he seems to have picked up. Nova Prime closes down the hologram of his nervous system, and displays another. It takes Peter a moment to realize that it’s a close up of the back of his leg, a close up of his Mark. It’s the first time he’s felt anything other than panic in days, and he snaps at her to turn it off. Gamora lays a hand on his shoulder, tries to calm him down, but he’s not having it because this isn’t any of their business. It’s private, something that belongs only to him. He doesn’t realize he’s talking aloud until Nova Prime informs him that it is, indeed, her business when the man with the matching Mark is a distinguished member of the Nova Corps.

Peter can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t feel anything other than panic. Gamora and Drax help him sit own before he falls; he can vaguely hear Rocket shouting at Nova Prime. Gamora grabs his attention, makes him concentrate on his breathing until his head clears. When he finally feels like his ribs aren’t going to burst, he stands. Rocket’s done yelling, though he’s positioned himself so that Nova Prime would not be able to reach Peter without crossing him first. Peter feels flimsy, like he’s been put through a grinder, and he thinks his knees might give out until they lock under him. No one is speaking now; they’re watching him.

“Where is he?”

***

The first time Saal wakes up, he knows he isn’t alone. He can hear someone else’s breathing, feel them shuffle somewhere close to him. He doesn’t have the strength to open his eyes.

The second time he wakes up, everything around him is in a panic. Alarms are going off, people are crowding around him, and there’s a weight sitting on his chest. He doesn’t understand what’s going on.

The third time he wakes up, everything is much quieter. He knows he’s in the hospital; he can smell the bleach, hear the beeping of several machines, feel the needles in his arm and the cannula in his nose. He opens his eyes carefully, blinks them until they’re clear, and looks for whoever has been keeping vigil by his side.

Rocket is sitting in the chair by his bed, dozing, with a flower pot in his lap. Saal opens his mouth to speak, and manages to choke on nothing but air. The noise rouses Rocket, who looks happy to see him before leaning forward to push the “call nurse” button. Rocket leaps from the chair to the railing on the bed, leaving the pot behind, and offers him a straw. The water soothes his throat, but it also alerts him to how awful his mouth tastes.

A nurse comes scurrying in to take his vitals and flash a pen light in his eyes. When he tells the nurse that she can take the light out of his eyes any damn time, Rocket laughs and tells her that he seems fine. As soon as Rocket convinces the nurse to give them a moment alone, Saal asks the raccoon what in the hell he’s doing here, and where Groot went. Rocket gives him the quick rundown from his own point of view, all the way up to and beyond the point of what Saal remembers. He stops before he gets to the part about Quill’s Mark, unsure of how to proceed.

It turns out that he doesn’t have to because the doctor, Quill, and his other companions are suddenly standing in the doorway. Drax and Gamora keep to the hallway, and Rocket and the flower pot step out to join them, but Quill steps into the room and hovers near the door. Saal tries to keep quiet while the doctor checks him over, but he hasn’t even been told how severe his injuries are, never mind what they are or how long he’s going to be confined to the hospital. As soon as he’s done and all of the proper information has been entered into Saal’s rather extensive medical file, the doctor sits down in the chair Rocket had been napping in to explain his condition.

His femur had been crushed; ligaments in his thigh, hip, and side torn; kidney bruised; four ribs broken; lung punctured; and shoulder dislocated. There is likely to be extensive scarring, and he will have to heal enough to start a physical therapy regime before they’ll know whether or not he’d limp for the rest of his life. All the while, as the doctor is explaining this, Saal can’t help but watch Quill; the other man seems to be listening intently, though he hasn’t raised his eyes from the floor.

When the doctor leaves to “give you and Mr. Quill some privacy”, Quill stays by the wall, but he does raise his eyes to look Saal over. When Saal questions Quill’s appearance, Quill tells him that he didn’t know, that he would have never known, but Nova Prime is a nosy bitch, and she said she’s arrest him if he didn’t stay. Saal has no idea what Peter is talking about, and says as much.

Peter wants nothing more than to reach out and touch Saal, to prove that he’s real, to feel living flesh beneath his own, but he has to make it through this conversation first. He feels choked up, doesn’t know how to deal with this situation, never let himself hope that this would happen after the colors had bled from his body. Peter stands at the foot of Saal’s bed and wrings his hands.

“You have a Mark on your shoulder, at the end of your collar bone,” he says, crossing his arms and unconsciously thumbing the same spot on his own arm.

Saal narrows his eyes and asks Peter how that could possibly be any of his business.

“It matches mine.”


End file.
